The Mask of Troy

by David Gibbins

  The man replied quietly, still staring ahead. ‘The double layer of oars is an anachronism. Bronze Age galleys were probably paddled longboats. I have some interest from my own student days, as a rower in Heidelberg. And by chance, it was one of Dillen’s students, Howard, who found fragments of late Bronze Age ships on the beach at Troy that seemed to confirm it. But the question still needs to be laid to rest. We need a well-preserved shipwreck.’

  ‘Perhaps they will find one. Howard and his team are at Troy again.’

  ‘Indeed. This morning’s papers.’

  ‘Good. You have been keeping abreast of events. We will walk, Professor Raitz?’

  Raitz turned, and saw a trim man, bearded, about thirty-five, with striking brown eyes and dark features, expensively dressed in a suit and a gaberdine raincoat. ‘Your Excellency.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. We don’t want to excite attention. Saumerre will do.’ He gestured with one hand, and they slowly made their way around the exhibits, pretending to study the artefacts. Raitz turned towards him, speaking quietly. ‘Howard’s daughter was in my office at the institute a few weeks ago. The Howard Gallery had a Dürer, given to Jack Howard’s father after the war by a friend of his who’d bought it at auction in Switzerland in 1945. The gallery had discovered it was a painting stolen - or should I say borrowed - by Reichsmarschall Göring, from a museum in Mainz. I have a reputation for facilitating the return of stolen works of art to the former Reich, and Miss Howard had come to me representing the gallery for that reason. Naturally, those wishing to return works to Jewish owners are politely told to go elsewhere. I do not deal with private ownership claims, only public museums and galleries.’

  ‘Of course. We know your reputation. That’s why I am here. You have open-door access to the back rooms of museums and galleries across Europe. And we know about Rebecca Howard.’ He took out an iPod and a photograph appeared, showing a vivacious-looking girl with long dark hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the letters USMC on the front. ‘Seventeen years old, born in Naples to Elizabeth d’Agostino, an archaeologist with the Italian superintendency. She and Jack Howard ended their affair nine months previously, when d’Agostino returned from her studies at Cambridge to Naples at the insistence of her family, who are Mafia. She told Howard nothing of their daughter and arranged for her to be brought up by friends in New York State, where Rebecca is still at school. Howard first met his daughter less than two years ago, shortly after her mother had been murdered. Since then he’s involved Rebecca in an archaeological project in India and central Asia, where she acquired that shirt from a US Marine dive team in Kyrgyzstan. She and her father are very close. In fact, she’s become close to the whole team.’

  ‘Impressive surveillance.’

  The man checked his watch. ‘Right now she’s at Troy. But she’s due back for a school trip to Paris in two days. She touches down at Heathrow from Istanbul at eleven thirty-five tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But what about now?’ Raitz said urgently. ‘You have brought what you promised?’

  Saumerre opened the flap of his coat and pulled out a document bag. He unzipped the top, and raised the contents enough for the other man to see the slightly foxed cover and the faded red capital letters along the top, in Gothic script.

  Raitz stared at it. He was shaking with excitement, his voice hoarse. ‘You are certain this is genuine?’

  Saumerre paused for a moment, then stared at Raitz. He spoke urgently, barely audible against the background noise of the museum. ‘I will let you in on a secret. A deadly secret. What you are about to embark on would destroy your career if it came out. What I am about to tell you would do more than destroy mine. It would put a bullet in the back of my neck.’

  ‘I understand,’ Raitz murmured, looking around, seeing that the gallery was empty. ‘You have my absolute word.’

  ‘You know my background from the media. Our embassy is in the news every day now. Officially I’m of North African descent, Algerian. But what you didn’t know is that one of my grandfathers was French, from Marseille. He was a small-time gangster, ran a petty crime ring, drugs, prostitution, protection rackets. He was arrested by the Vichy police in late 1940 and ended up in a concentration camp in Germany. His lifeline was that he’d trained originally as a chef, and they put him to work in a small labour camp near Belsen. In the final weeks of the war the camp was flooded with Jews force-marched there from Auschwitz, and in the chaos he escaped. But he knew what had been going on in the camp. What it had been built for. What was stored there.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Raitz whispered, his heart pounding with excitement. ‘What we’re after? Stolen works of art?’

  ‘There’s more.’ Saumerre paused, and steered Raitz over to the case containing the Troy artefacts, staring studiously at them as a class of schoolchildren streamed by. He waited until they had disappeared into the Egyptian gallery, then spoke again. ‘There is another secret. Our secret.’ He paused again, checking carefully around, then moved close to Raitz. ‘When my grandfather returned to Marseille, he picked up where he’d left off. There were rich opportunities in the years after the war. He already had an Algerian wife, and he extended his interests to French North Africa. It was the time of the French-Algerian war, and he profiteered. It became a multi-million-dollar business. When my father came of age, he inherited it.’

  Raitz stared at him. ‘And now you?’

  ‘Keep your voice down. Please.’ Saumerre took out a handkerchief, and dabbed his forehead. ‘Perhaps I have said enough.’

  ‘I swear never to tell.’

  Saumerre took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘You’re right. There’s no going back now. But you must understand. I have always kept my political career and my business interests strictly separate.’

  ‘What was your grandfather’s secret? What had he seen? What did he know?’

  ‘He told my father, and my father told me. As a boy, I was fascinated by the stories of lost Nazi loot, hidden away in lakes and bunkers and mines. I became determined to chase up any leads, to find what was left. We all know there’s more to be discovered. There’s a long list of works of art that have never been found. A huge fortune to be made.’

  ‘Stop there.’ Raitz stood back, suddenly wary. ‘We may be at cross-purposes. I thought you were behind my dream. I am not doing this for money.’

  Saumerre put up his hand. ‘Relax. All of the paintings are yours. But this is a business arrangement. You have the paintings, we have the rest.’

  ‘What do you mean, the rest?’

  Saumerre gestured at the cabinet. ‘What do you know about Schliemann’s lost treasure?’

  Raitz stared at the pots. ‘You asked me to research it when we first made contact two weeks ago. Some of the gold from Troy went missing for years, then showed up in Moscow. That’s common knowledge. But there’s always been a question over whether Schliemann found more at Mycenae. Nothing’s ever been proven.’

  ‘We know,’ Saumerre said. ‘We know. And that’s our cut. We want gold, antiquities, unique items that have huge cachet as collateral in arms deals, pipeline deals, multi-million-dollar enterprises that can rest on a single handshake, a single gesture of goodwill. Yet you and I have much in common. I am an educated man too, a lover of the arts. One day we should come here and talk more about these marvels.’ He swept his hand about the room. ‘We may regret that some of the great cultural treasures might never end up in museums. But some have been lost for so long, stolen so long ago and never found, that their very loss has become part of our culture. Schliemann’s treasure, for example. And look around us here. Already there are too many wonders to comprehend. And for you, my friend, it is our price. There is no compromise.’

  Raitz looked at him, and then remembered the huge step he had taken to come here, the risk, his mounting excitement. His heart was pounding. He nodded. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘We will provide you with security. They call themselves Totenköpfe, after the Nazi death’s-head un
its. But they are mainly Russians. Ex-military. Mercenaries. Thugs for hire.’

  ‘They will do any dirty work.’

  ‘You need have no worry. That is out of your hands.’

  ‘There will be no killing?’ Raitz asked anxiously.

  Saumerre peered at him, his eyebrows raised. ‘My friend. You forget your heritage. Your legacy. Why you are here.’ He paused, then put a hand on his arm. ‘As I said. You need have no worry.’

  ‘These Totenköpfe. They can be controlled?’

  ‘The ones you will see will be mere employees. Their leaders are united by their common allegiance to your cause. They swear to uphold the Nero Decree, Hitler’s order to destroy Germany, to have the thousand-year Reich or nothing. But this of course is fantasy. We have used them before in our business dealings in eastern Europe, and have found them more than willing to forgo ideology if the stack of gold bars is high enough. And this time it will be higher than any they have ever seen.’

  ‘And what if we don’t find it? Who do they blame?’

  ‘Business is about risks. You modify your plans. But that will not be necessary.’

  ‘Will there be anyone else?’

  ‘I believe you will be assisted by a colleague. By several colleagues.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The place you will be going may require technical expertise. Skills that few have to the level required.’

  ‘These are your people too?’

  Saumerre looked at his watch. ‘Exactly twenty-four hours from now, you will know.’ He paused, looked round, listened, then opened his coat and withdrew the document case. ‘And now for what you want. On the twenty-ninth of April 1945, Adolf Hitler issued his final will and testament from his bunker in Berlin. We know you have often spoken of it, to sympathizers, to the secret network of friends you have developed over the years, others who share the same legacy, the same passion. That’s how we came to know of you. We were seeking just such a man.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When my contact told you to meet me here, the message said that I would pass on all that you needed to realize the dream, to create the museum the Führer so craved, to fulfil his legacy.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Raitz gripped Saumerre’s arm tight, his eyes blazing. ‘A secret museum in Bavaria, in the mountains he so loved. A shrine, a rallying point for all those who carry on the dream. A Führermuseum, reborn.’

  ‘This document is genuine. You can subject it to all the tests you want. You have all the laboratories of London at your disposal, a scholar of your influence. But you have my word. It was typed in duplicate in the Führerbunker by Adolf Hitler himself, then handed over to Martin Borman for dispersal. It’s dated the fourth of April 1945, less than four weeks before the Führer took his own life. One copy went by motorcycle courier towards Holland. It has never been found. Another went to somewhere near the labour camp where my grandfather worked. He found it on the body of a German officer, and kept it secret all this time, finally revealing it to me only this year, just before his death.’ Saumerre pulled the envelope out, hesitated, then passed it to Raitz, who took it and quickly concealed it under his coat. ‘It has what you want, for your dream. But now. When we contacted you, we asked about anything you might have seen with that swastika on it, the counterclockwise swastika. You said you had something for us?’

  Raitz pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket. ‘A former Dutch antiquities dealer. Became a police informant. Rebecca Howard contacted him too, because he had an interest in Dürer. When Interpol used me as a consultant I insisted that they send me all of his papers, for my eyes only. I already knew of him for his interest in Schliemann’s treasures. My instinct was right. He had hundreds of Nazi documents. And one, one only, had the reverse swastika on it.’

  ‘I must know. Where is this document?’

  ‘In a safe in my house.’

  ‘Is it a map?’

  ‘It’s some kind of plan, a route. Perhaps underground. The Dutchman may know more. He has gone into hiding.’

  ‘Then that is it,’ Saumerre whispered. ‘I was right, when my grandfather told me the story. He said he had spoken to Jewish inmates who had worked underground. I knew it was in a mine. Our preparations have not been in vain. Guard the document with your life. We will be in touch.’ Saumerre turned to go, but Raitz kept hold of his arm, stopping him.

  ‘One question.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Nazis always gave top-secret directives names. What did they call this one?’

  ‘Look at the top.’ Saumerre shook away the hand, straightened his coat and walked away, out of sight towards the museum entrance. Raitz glanced around, then quickly unzipped the bag and pulled out the document inside, reading the Gothic letters in red he had glimpsed earlier. Further down, he saw the reverse swastika, a platinum colour. And the words under it. He gasped.

  Das Agamemnon-Code.

  The Agamemnon Code.

  He stood motionless for a moment, staring at the case in front of him, in a daze, looking beyond the pottery, the jewellery, the broken swords and arrowheads, seeing only in his mind’s eye what had once mesmerized him in another museum, years before in Athens, the great golden mask that had been raised from a royal tomb more than a hundred and thirty years ago. He was thinking again what he had thought then. What did Heinrich Schliemann really see when he raised the Mask of Agamemnon?

  Back then, standing in front of that mask, it had been idle speculation, the dream of a student. Now it was part of a deadly path he was on. A path that would burn his name in history. A path that would raise again the glory of the Reich.

  He closed the bag and held it under his coat, as if it were the greatest treasure ever found. He hardly dared think of the signature he knew must lie at the bottom of the document. Soon, he would touch it. That name.

  The signature of a man whose will would be done.

  Heil, mein Führer.

  5

  Off the island of Tenedos, the Aegean Sea

  Fifteen minutes after Costas had left him on the foredeck of Seaquest II, Jack walked into the conference room below the bridge and pulled the door shut behind him. About thirty of the ship’s crew and scientific personnel were seated on plastic chairs facing a table with a laptop computer and an old-fashioned overhead transparency projector. On the wall behind it was a screen showing the British Admiralty chart of the north-east Aegean, with their position highlighted. Jack reached the front and turned round. Costas was seated at the far left of the front row, talking with two of his submersibles technicians, but he stopped when he saw Jack and leaned forward intently. Seated directly in front of Jack was Dr Jacob Lanowski, their CGI simulations expert and all-round genius, the main reason for the briefing. Lanowski was staring expectantly at Jack through thick round glasses, nervously sweeping his long lank hair from his face, clutching a sheaf of notes and transparency sheets. Jack smiled at him, glanced at his watch and held up his hand. ‘Captain Macalister tells me we have twenty minutes before the ship is fully stabilized over the site and the docking bay is ready. Costas and I will be doing the dive, but this is a team effort and every one of you is a part of it.’

  He turned and aimed a light-pointer at Troy on the map. ‘I called this briefing mainly to let Dr Lanowski give us a run-down on the bathymetry and sedimentology. But some of you are recent arrivals and still don’t know the reason we’re here, so I want to spend a few minutes talking about that. And there’s a connection with what Dr Lanowski’s going to tell you, an incredible connection. Even I haven’t had the full picture yet.’ He beamed at Lanowski, who looked around, smiling awkwardly at the others, before dropping his sheaf of papers and scrabbling to pick them up. Jack glanced at Costas, who had raised his eyes to the ceiling. Not for the first time Jack wondered if their resident genius would last the course.

  Jack tapped a key on the laptop, bringing up an aerial photograph on the screen. It showed an archaeological excavation under way, an ope
n area of perhaps ten by twenty metres surrounded by dense rows of tomato plants. He pointed to the sole person visible, a desultory figure wearing a huge sombrero sitting on one side of the trench, clutching a water bottle and staring at a dark patch on the otherwise featureless sand in front of him. ‘Some of you may recognize our esteemed colleague Dr Kazantzakis. His first ever experience of archaeology.’

  ‘And so nearly my last,’ Costas piped up. There was a ripple of laughter.

  ‘We’re about a kilometre north-west of Troy, fifteen years ago,’ Jack continued. ‘Our first excavation together, on a shoestring budget. Before IMU. Before Seaquest. But what we found there kick-started it all.’ He clicked again, and the screen transformed to a 3-D CGI rendition of the Dardanelles and the plain of Troy. ‘A farmer had found some charred timbers while he was ploughing. We knew the river Scamander had silted up the plain, and our excavation proved that this spot had been the beach in the late Bronze Age. Amazingly, the timbers were from ships, war galleys that had burned on the seashore. We found only a few fragments, but enough for radiocarbon analysis, which gave a date of about 1200 BC, exactly the time of the destruction of Troy. And there was more. In the picture, Costas thinks he’s looking at nothing. But he’s wrong. That dark stain proved to be an open fire pit. It was filled with butchered bones, huge joints. The entire carcass of a bull. It was a feast fit for heroes. Where Costas was sitting, Achilles had once sat. Achilles was sulking too, but over a woman.’

  ‘If only,’ Costas said.

  Everyone laughed again. Jack held up his hand. ‘I thought that discovery, that incredible connection with the past, was about as good as it gets. It was fantastically exciting. I felt like Heinrich Schliemann, on the trail of Agamemnon. And now we’re back there again. This time it’s not just charred fragments we’re after. This time it’s a full-on shipwreck. But the clue to that didn’t come from the beach excavation. It came from somewhere completely unexpected, from one of the most amazing places we’ve ever discovered, about a thousand miles due west from here.’